About Me

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Going to the Chapel . . . .

Actually, they were going to St. Stephan Catholic church in Mainz with beautiful stained glass by Marc Chagall (wasn't he Jewish?). The bride is the daughter of an old friend of Wayne's, and we couldn't have been more pleased to be invited to the wedding. Afterwards, of course, there was a reception: the wedding was at 2 and I applied American assumptions about how late it would go. Boy, was I off! After the wedding, we went to the reception site where they had tables laid out with all kinds of delicious cakes. While we enjoyed cake and snacks, friends of the bride and groom asked guests to make up gift certificates for the happy couple and to write down their wishes for them. (The father of the bride wrote a gift certificate that he would still change her summer tires for winter ones.) That portion of the reception lasted until around 7, when they took a group photo of all the wedding guests and the bride tossed the bouquet. Want to guess who caught it? (We did persuade her to give it to the girlfriend of the brother of the bride!)Then it was inside for the formal dinner. The set up of the tables is different from most American weddings, with the tables in long rows. The table at the left was the head table and there were also a couple of smaller tables off to the side for the kids. The bride and groom welcomed all the guests and then introduced each (over 100 people) with some comment about their relationship to the bride and/or groom.

Between courses formal toasts, skits, songs, etc. were presented by the parents of the bride and the groom and by some of the guests. Unfortunately, we only made it to just past the main course (about 10:30), when Abby, who'd had a sleepover at school the previous night, was falling into her food. Wayne stayed until about midnight, when the dancing started and the last public bus for Wiesbaden left.